Priceline Hotel: 5* Las Vegas (Strip South) Vdara

[coolstar]

Was going to stay at MGM Grand, but they raised the rate the day before I want to book. :)

So I turn to Priceline's Name Your Own Price. I found out MGM is one of the most expensive 4* hotel, so I think if I submit price for 4*, I most likely will get the lower end 4* hotel.

Therefore I started to target the 5* hotels instead of 4* at Strip South (that is where I want to stay).

Map shown there are six 5* hotels in this zone (Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, Cosmopolitan, Aria, Vdara & Bellagio), Vdara by far has the lowest retail price at $149.

I started with $80 but it was not accepted. When I increased the offer to $90, it is accepted by Vdara (as I expected).

I got about 40% off the retail price, and I am happy about it!

PS. This system can get you good deal on lower end hotels within the same star class, such as Vdara & Trump in the 5* class. But you will almost never able to get deal for the high end hotels because the lower offer always get accepted by the lower end hotels first. Wish in the future we will have a system that can "test the bottom line" of a specific hotel.

[AaronJB]

Congrats on your success.

Very nice deal for this newer Vegas property.

Only a few properties are known to participate out of the 5*'s in this zone - only Cosmopolitan, Aria, Vdara have been reported as participants (and out of those the Cosmo only recently.) The lowest priced property is definitely not always the hotel that one gets, but this is a case of a zone and star rating where a couple of properties are very commonly seen (Vdara and Aria, the former definitely more than the latter.)

Thank you for sharing your win and using the site's PRICELINE or HOTWIRE links to start your purchases and searches.

Enjoy your stay.

[coolstar]

Here is my logic on how this work:

Each hotel has its own "bottom line". Let's say Vdara's "bottome line" is $90 is the lowest in this zone(which I got accepted), and Cosmopolitan at $120 is the second lowest (just for example).

The way I started out with $80 and move up would eventually accepted by Vdara at $90.

If I started out with $100 as my first offer, I probably will get accepted by Vdara too.

What I am not sure is if I have my first offer as $120, will I get accepted by Vdara or Cosmopolitan?

I hope the system will give me the hotel with higher "bottom line" in this scenario.

But even so, since we don't know what the hotel's bottom lines are, we always want to start low.

That is the reason why we are seeing most the offers are accepted by the hotels with the lower retail rate.